According to Snopes.com itâs been going around for more than seven years in one form or another. It claims members of Congress get lavish pensions and also claims they donât pay into Social Security. (They do pay Social Security taxes, as we pointed out in an earlier âAsk FactCheckâ item.)
Fox News has now finished No. 1 in primetime for 10 out of the last 11 weeks, averaging 2.14 million viewers for the week of August 15-21. MSNBC averaged 1.06 million primetime viewers and CNN averaged 746,000. CNN continues to disappoint in August after a tremendous July, finishing the week No. 18 during primetime compared to No. 7 for MSNBC. CNN had beat MSNBC for all of July.
FNC has been the top rated cable news network for 86 consecutive months, finishing February as the third most watched basic cable network in primetime. CNN was 15th and MSNBC was 23rd. In primetime (M-F), FNC averaged 2.8 million viewers (657,000 in the demo).